Apple iPhone 17 Pro without OLED flickering: PWM can be turned off

In our comprehensive review of the Apple iPhone 16 Pro, we found that the flagship relies on PWM to reduce screen brightness, like the vast majority of modern OLED smartphones. We measured a PWM frequency of 239Hz with an amplitude of 15%, meaning the display flickers 239 times per second, and the display's behavior changes slightly depending on the brightness setting.

A low PWM frequency of 239Hz can cause the display to visibly flicker or even cause eye strain and headaches for sensitive users, while less sensitive users often don't notice any flickering at all. MacRumors has now confirmed that the Apple iPhone 17 Pro offers an option to deactivate PWM entirely, which should make it significantly more pleasant to use for some people. However, this feature must be manually enabled in the system settings.

When enabled, users are warned that this option could possibly affect the display's performance at low brightness settings, but it's not clear if Apple is referring to response time, refresh rate or color accuracy. It's also unclear whether this option will be available on other iPhones with iOS 26 or how Apple will dim the display without PWM. More information on this subject will be revealed in our detailed review of the iPhone 17 series.